Do you remember?

Last night, Jax awoke from his snooze suddenly, as he ususally does being deaf.  But this time he was breathing heavily and had this extremely sad and confused look on his face.  He sleepily stumbled directly over to me, climbed up onto the couch and burried his head in my chest.  He just looked pathetic.  I held him tightly and he calmed down and went back to sleep pretty quickly, right there on my lap.  I wonder.  Did he dream of his "other" life?  90 percent of the time, he seems to live in the moment and is the happiest boy in the world.  But every now and then, he does something that makes me want to ask him if he remembers his past. All of the "experts" have different theories on whether or not dogs have the mental capacity for long-term memory, and how long it lasts.  It's one more thing we'll never know for sure I guess, but I'll always wonder. 

This was a less extreme version of the night terrors that he had for at least the first week that we fostered him.  He used to wake up, trembling so hard that I first thought he was actually having a seizure!  These panic attacks lasted several minutes, sometimes nearly a half an hour.  I would wrap him up tightly into a blanket and sit with him until he came back.  I say that, because it really seemed as though he was somewhere else and that there was nothing that could comfort him.  As he began to trust us, the nightly episodes stopped for the most part and the ones that he has now are nothing in comparison.  It makes me sad to think about his old life and that he may still have some of those bad memories haunting him in his sleep.  At least now, he seeks out comfort in us and all he seems to need to recover is a nice long hug from mom.